O'FALLON DROPS PLAN FOR RANDOM DRUG TESTS

Survey Shows More Kids Use Alcohol

O'Fallon Township High School students will not face random drug
testing next school year.

Instead, they will receive a stern warning about booze.

About one-third of seniors surveyed in February said they had used
alcohol within the last month. The result led school leaders to dump
a proposal for random drug testing of up to 75 percent of students
who participate in sports and extracurricular activities.

Because the tests cannot catch alcohol use, school leaders decided
they were not worth the cost.

"If we did a random drug testing program, we would either catch
nobody or we would catch very few kids and that means we would be
testing a whole lot of kids who are not using and that is counter
productive in terms of resources and time," said assistant principal
Jeff Yates, who first raised the idea of random testing after
attending a conference.

Yates said 1,951 students -- or 83 percent of the 2,341 students at
the high school -- completed the anonymous survey.

"We were pleasantly surprised that drug use, including marijuana use,
was lower than we anticipated and we think the numbers are very
positive," Yates said.

Alcohol emerged as the drug of choice.

The survey showed 19 percent of the freshmen had been drunk at least
once, 31 percent of the sophomores, 39 percent of juniors and 46
percent of the seniors. At the national level, 58 percent of seniors
report having been drunk.

The propensity was to drink at parties or at night with
friends.

"But the numbers that worried us the most -- and whether or not these
are exaggerated I don't know -- are the claims kids make that they
use alcohol at home with their parents' knowledge," Yates said.

Sixteen percent of the freshmen had drinks with their parents'
knowledge. The numbers grew to 24 percent of seniors.

"If that is true, that is a disturbing number of parents who are
letting their kids use alcohol," he said.

Cigarettes were behind alcohol for students reporting at least
one-time use. Thirty-two percent of the seniors had smoked, compared
to 50 percent nationally.

Marijuana was next on the hit parade, but again was below the
national average. Nationally, 45 percent of seniors have smoked pot,
but only 29 percent of O'Fallon seniors had.

As for consequences, most students often said they "couldn't remember
what happened" after using drugs or alcohol.

Nearly half of the seniors reported being totally clean. Just more
than 3 percent of the seniors reported being addicted or using
multiple drugs.

The next task for faculty and staff members who have been studying
drug use by students will be to explore ways to reduce alcohol use.